The 25 November presidential and parliamentary elections were always going to be difficult but the violence has already begun. On 5 September, a crowd of supporters of President Joseph Kabila’s Parti du peuple pour la reconstruction et le développement pelted about 1,000 supporters of Etienne Tshisekedi wa Mulumba, outside their party headquarters. Veteran oppositionist Tshisekedi is presidential candidate for his Union pour la démocratie et le progrès social. UDPS militants retaliated by setting fire to the PPRD building and burning seven cars.
In turn, unidentified men burned down the UDPS offices, attacked Tshisekedi’s home with stones and petrol bombs, and ransacked the Lisanga television station belonging to Roger Lumbala, one of Tshisekedi’s backers. On the next day, according to the UPDS youth wing, a PPRD fighter shot dead a UPDS activist and seriously wounded two others.
The Commission électorale nationale indépendante has approved twelve candidates. The CENI Chairman is the Reverend Daniel Ngoy Mulunda, a cousin of the late President Laurent-Désiré Kabila, father of the current President, who signed up last, accompanied by over 3,000 dancing and cheering supporters. Despite having the second-largest number of parliamentary seats, the Mouvement de libération du Congo is not putting up a presidential candidate. Its leader, Jean-Pierre Bemba, is on trial in the Hague, accused of atrocities in Central African Republic in 2002-03. The International Criminal Court refused him the bail he had requested to file his presidential candidacy in Kinshasa (AC Vol 52 No 17). A prominent MLC activist, Adam Bombole Intole, is standing as an independent but without official party backing. CENI tried to get the UDPS to sign an agreement promising peaceful electioneering but it refused.

Etienne Tshisekedi is thus Kabila’s main opponent. Now 79, he has refused appeals from other opposition parties to present a united front. ‘I have not struggled for 30 years to hand my position over to anyone else,’ he said last year. His main support is in his native Kasaï Province, which is rich in minerals and seeks more independence from central government.
The other presidential candidates include Vital Kamerhe, former Assembly President and Prime Minister under the late President Mobutu Sese Seko, and Léon Lobitsch Kengo wa Dondo, Senate President and another of Mobutu's Prime Ministers. Two contenders recently left Kabila’s presidential alliance: Antipas Mbusa Nyamwisi, who heads the Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie-Kisangani, and François-Joseph Nzanga Mobutu Ngbangawe, ex-minister, son of the late President Mobutu and leader of the Union des démocrates mobutistes (Udemo). Another candidate is Oscar Kashala Lukumuenda of the Union pour la reconstruction du Congo (Urec). Lesser-known candidates include Jean Andeka Djamba, leader of the Alliance des nationalistes croyants congolais; François Nicéphore Kakese Malela, a veterinarian who leads the Union pour le réveil et le développement du Congo; and Rev. Josué-Alex Mukendi, independent.
CENI will probably postpone the polls because preparations are by no means complete. Computers, ballot-boxes and other necessary items have been ordered from South Africa, China, Germany and Lebanon but (apart from 400 tonnes of supplies from China) have not yet arrived, let alone been distributed across the vast country. European diplomats do not expect voting to take place before mid-January. This carries strong risks of instability because Kabila is already on notice from the opposition that it considers his term as legally ending on 6 December, five years from his inaugural oath, and will have no legitimacy thereafter (AC Vol 52 No 1).
In January, Kabila used his majority in parliament to push though the abolition of the second round of the presidential poll. Now he only has to get more votes than any other candidate to win (AC Vol 52 No 2). On 1 September the MLC, Kamerhe’s Union pour la nation congolaise, Kengo’s Union des forces pour le changement and Kashala’s Urec agreed a joint programme based on good governance, fair distribution of wealth and common values like tolerance. That didn’t stop them negotiating separately with Mbusa Nyamwisi or promising to rule out fresh alliances or abstain in favour of a single candidate.
For the past year, Kabila has been presenting himself as the master-builder, pointing to the building or repair of many bridges and roads, while trying to ignore the continual power-cuts by the Société nationale d’électricité (Snel). In the provinces of Bas-Congo and Katanga, the President is the only candidate with concrete achievements to display, even if they are incomplete. In western Congo, he is perceived as an eastern Kiswahili-speaker. In Kinshasa, they like his quiet temperament. In Bas-Congo in 2007-08, he lost support when his army ruthlessly suppressed the politico-religious Bundu dia Kongo cult. In Equateur Province, his repression of the MLC is often seen as a regional persecution. In the eastern Kivu and Orientale provinces, he is blamed for failing to restore peace. The nation is divided and the election campaign could turn into a bloody struggle.

Worries about Gécamines
Mining investors are getting nervous as Gécamines mounts another assault on a large private investment. This time it’s the turn of George Arthur Forrest, the Belgian mining and construction tycoon. They are particularly concerned because Forrest has not only been entrenched in Congo-Kinshasa for many years but also was believed to be very close to President Kabila’s PPRD. An internal PPRD memorandum of 2005 had lauded the Forrest Group for accompanying the party ‘step by step’ in its campaign to implant itself in Katanga.

Gécamines is now locked in dispute with the controversial Belgian over his 60% holding in the Compagnie minière du Sud Katanga (CMSK), which works the mineral deposits of Luiswishi and Luisha and in which Forrest claims to have invested US$250 million though its Entreprise générale Malta-Forrest subsidiary. The dispute arises from an attempt to transfer ownership of EGMF’s stake in the company to Forrest as an individual. The Forrest Group is a private, family-owned company and the reason why EGMF wants to sell to Forrest individually is not known. However, EGMF was obliged to notify Gécamines of the sale or transfer and Gécamines decided on 1 July to exercise its right to pre-empt any other buyer and take over EGMF’s holding in CMSK.
Forrest contests that his purchase is not the kind of transaction to which Gécamines pre-emption rights apply. Gécamines Chief Executive Officer Albert Yuma Mulimbi says it does and arbitration has been ongoing at the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris. Gécamines has taken its case to the Tribunal de commerce de Lubumbashi, a quasi-judicial body, which has ordered EGMF to be offered $15.7 mn. for its share in CMSK.
Forrest is not the only investor in dispute with the Congolese authorities. First Quantum Minerals has seen its shares in several projects in Katanga taken over, and has referred the matter to the ongoing Paris arbitration tribunal and to the Washington-based International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (AC Vol 51 No 16). Foreign companies are worried that they may be next, especially since Gécamines has opened an audit of all its mining joint ventures.